


ひきこもり

by broblerone



Series: post-cal bro drabbles [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Post-Sburb, hikikomori, post-cal bro, title translates to:
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 03:09:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16694293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/broblerone/pseuds/broblerone
Summary: things make sense, among the screaming LCD.four years post-cal, and bro is a hikikomori.





	ひきこもり

You’ve been sitting in front of your computer screen for hours now. It’s the only thing you’re any good at. Reddit and YouTube lost your interest a long time ago; recently, you’ve taken to trawling through the dark recesses of the web. Just to see what you can find. Blowfly Girl, Mouchette, Superbad, Mother Horse Eyes. A sea of text and color is the only thing that can keep the low drone of your aching head at bay. The depraved nonsense does nothing to make you feel clean by comparison, but everything to make you feel welcomed. Things make sense, amidst the screaming LCD.

God, your head hurts.

It’s been four years since you woke up without Cal around. It took you two and a half of them to become competent enough at autonomy to be left to your own devices. Tragically, you grew tired of the excessive praise and cautious support quicker than everyone else did. You aren’t made of glass. You may have lacked experience, you may have been fragile and naïve, but you’re not a child. You never were, regardless of how keen Egbert was to compare you to one.

You’re tired, and your head hurts. They still don’t trust you to live on your own.

You can’t really blame them for that one. You don’t work, and you’re sure you wouldn’t be able to hold down a job if you tried. While you’re no longer a lumbering casket of a man, you don’t exactly have any marketable skills, either. You don’t mind. Working would be pointless, anyway. Your wealth from your first shot at life carried over into this one, and you don’t need much to sustain yourself.

You’ve decided to start pawing through the deep web.

Despite being a social recluse, your living space is far from the stereotype. Your room is nearly spotless, uninhabited. The drawn blinds and glow of the computer screen are missing their scene partners, but you don’t care enough about appearances to keep dirty dishes and soda cans piled around your desk. The rest of the apartment would be the same, but Dave knows how to unclench his asshole for a second and leave a hoodie on the back of the couch.

Dave actually _does_ things. If you were to interact with anything other than your computer screen all day, you’re sure you would be leaving half-finished projects all over the place just like you used to.

It’s a good thing that you stay in front of your desktop. It keeps the apartment less cluttered.

You told yourself that you wouldn’t poke around in the deep web, but you’re doing it, anyway. What do you have to lose? A credit card number? Your nonexistent identity? Your life? You’ve been hurt worse than any TOR-user could manage to hurt you.

You’ve been hurt worse than _anyone_ could manage to hurt you. Why can’t they see that? If they acknowledged you without trying to cradle you, would you be less inclined to waste your days in front of text? Nonjudgmental, inconsiderate, unbiased text? Your head fucking _hurts._

Maybe, for a little while, you just want to surround yourself with things on your level. Maybe you don’t want to pretend that things are sanitized and clean and _good._ Maybe you just want to steep in the knowledge that the world has a place for a degenerate like you. You feel at home in the esoteric filth. The comfort inherent in knowing that there are others out there whose lives can’t be talked out in a Tumblr post—can’t be made _coherent_ —keeps you steady.

You stumble across a page on Superbad that you hadn’t discovered before, all clashing colors and gibberish and barely-discernable pixel art, and you understand.


End file.
